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Snow Roller

Snow Roller

Axe hewn oak, cracked, patched and rust stained by iron bands and
clamped on an axle centering a horse-high drum,
the roller frame was burnished by shoulders of three generations.
The snow roller packed Cabot’s back roads for
fifty winters before town meeting voted to buy a plow.
With a click of a tongue and a “hut, hut, hut”
Will Walker lead Molly and Meg
past yearlings and stretching barn cats.
Under the light of  the cloud-veiled moon 
four ears cocked back,
steam rose from grinding jaws,
icicles dripped from snuffling nostrils 
and hooves beat an uneven tattoo.
Will pulled off his woolen mitts and 
harnessed the mares with straps and buckles 
to the handmade rig - his inheritance and burden. 
Will yawned, pulled his buffalo robe tight 
and buried chin in chest to duck the whistling wind.
With a rattle of reins and a quiet “git-up”
Molly, Meg and the snow roller crunched free from last week’s crust,
creaked out of the farmyard and 
plodded a full two miles over belly high drifts
down Whittier Hill to the awakening village.
At the Congregational churchyard, they circled around 
And labored up the other side.
The rolling boards pressed dry squeaks 
from the hard packed snow
as the sun shouldered over familiar hills and 
pushed morning light through
the final white dusting 
of Vermont’s last blizzard of 1928.
Jay Wilkinson

Not my grandfather’s  roller. But it could have been.  jw


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